Ryan Garcia
The New York Yankees have failed to win a championship in the Aaron Judge era, which is why there’s always going to be some skepticism about their ability to do so as the drought goes on.
Since they’ve qualified for the postseason this much without getting that title, you’ve seen various iterations of Yankees’ teams struggle to either get the big hit to win a series or get blown up by an opposing offense.
2026 has been another season where the team looks comfortably in position to make the postseason, guided by an offense with tons of power that has scored a bevy of runs.
Despite that production, the discourse about the lineup always flares up after a loss…but where does it go after a big win like last night?
READ: Are the Yankees seeing Cody Bellinger revert to his MVP form in 2026?
It’s Time To Stop Lying About the Yankees’ Offense
The Yankees won another contest last night thanks to a pair of multi-run home runs, propelling the team to a victory over the Blue Jays despite falling ina 3-0 deficit to Dylan Cease.
Signed to a seven-year contract by the Blue Jays to be their ace, he had been brilliant to start the season, mowing down offenses with ease before running into the Bronx Bombers.
He suffered his worst outing of the season, surrendering five runs for the first time this season and going from one homer allowed all year to allowing two homers in the same game.
New York has the sixth-best OBP (.333) in baseball with the most home runs (73), and that combination right there is why this team is so dynamic offensively.
Sure they’re dead-last in singles as a team and have the 7th-highest K% in MLB, but those metrics aren’t very descriptive when it comes to measuring offensive output.
The one note in this chart I will make is that for 2021, the last season where pitchers had to hit in the National League, I used non-pitcher production so their number of total singles are a bit muddied by a subtraction of PAs.
When evaluating the five most recent World Series Champions, there is not much signal between hitting signals or strikeout avoidance and winning a title.
No team has finished outside of the top four in HRs or had an OBP outside of the top 10 and won a World Series Championship, you need to be really good in both categories to win.
We’re overindexing the impact that hitting singles or not striking out has on winning when it matters most for what is mostly an aesthetics conversation, not a productivity one.
This doesn’t mean we can’t identify that a hit with a runner on third is more valuable than a walk, it means that it’s more important for a team to have those multi-run home runs than it is to have those one RBI singles.
The Toronto Blue Jays are the perfect case study for this; the 2025 iteration of this team finished just outside the top 10 in home runs while having a league-best .333 OBP, trending upward in the power department after a putrid April.
With a league-best .471 SLG% in the postseason they were two outs away from a World Series Championship, raining home runs all over the Yankees’ pitching staff in that butt-kicking of an ALDS.
Fast-forward to 2026, and while they’ve maintained a league-best 18.4% K% while being seventh in singles as a team, their drop-off in home runs and OBP have caused their offense to sputter.
Losing their power and on-base skills has sunk them to the fifth-worst offense in the sport by OPS despite maintaining their excellent bat-to-ball skills, if they regain those skills they should be right back in the AL pennant race.
You’re going to get some very annoying games where the Yankees don’t score because with less than two outs and a runner on third, they struck out and couldn’t cash in.
That’s a concession they make to have games like last night where they immediately punch Dylan Cease right back with five runs on the home run ball, and it’s why they’re fifth in Runs Scored and second in wRC+ as a squad.
I’d prefer that my bad hitters have better bat-to-ball skills or hit deep flyballs more to generate sac flies and home runs, but those are adjustments they can make at a fairly inexpensive cost at the deadline.
Adding depth would take them from very good to potentially unstoppable come postseason time, but arguing that imperfection makes something bad is asinine in its premise.
LeBron James is an inconsistent three-point shooter, Tom Brady has poor mobility, and Aaron Judge runs high in-zone whiff rates, all three of those players are surefire Hall of Famers who had all-time great peaks.
The Yankees have a strong offense that will finish the season near the top of the league in Runs Scored even if they don’t make adjustments barring serious injuries.
I’d like them to use that foundation to make this group even better, as would most of the people reading this article, but I hope this piece serves as a way to re-configure what we value in an offense.
More about:New York Yankees
